294 ANNUAL REPORT OF THE 0£f. Doc. 



them would have done when the3' were right. There were also five 

 two-year-old heifers with their first calves. All these causes re- 

 duced the yield as above. Yet these are things that must always 

 be reckoned with. I am giving facts, not a fancy sketch. Had 

 the milk yield been greater the cost of production a quart would of 

 course, been less. My milk tests five per cent. I consider I could 

 produce ten thousand pounds of three per cent, milk as easily as I 

 could six thousand pounds of five per cent. milk. The former would 

 not ordinarily bring as much and would not furnish the kind of 

 cream my trade requires. We carried during the year twenty-five 

 head of milkers. The account stands as follows: 



Purchased grain, $556 94 



Twenty acres pasture, 320 00 



Soiling crops, 100 00 



One hundred tons of silage, 300 00 



Twenty tons of hay, 200 00 



Total for feed, |1,476 94 



A trifle more than |59 a head. To this must be added |125 as 

 interest on twenty-five cows at |50 each at 10 per cent, and |3G5 for 

 labor, making a grand total of |1,9GG.94. Taking the total yield 

 of milk, 62,500 quarts — 2,500 a cow — and dividing the total cost by 

 that sum, we find the milk cost to be .0314 a quart. The feed pur- 

 chased is just what I jjaid out in the twelve months. The twenty 

 acres devoted to pasture were helped out by some supplemental 

 feed, such as clover, oats and peas, corn and not less than two pounds 

 of grain daily, besides some after feed on the meadows. I reckon 

 that the pasture would have cut two tons of hay to the acre, or 

 forty tons total. This quality of hay — mixed grasses — would have 

 sold that year for |10 a ton. Taking off |2 a ton for harvesting 

 and marketing leaves |S net, or $320, which I could have obtained 

 from the pasture land had I devoted it to hay. It seems to me this 

 is the only way to figure pasture. Let it be understood that there 

 is probably no better in the State; in a normal year it will yield 

 fully two tons of cured hay to the acre. On account of the drouth 

 I have this year thrown in some after feed from the meadows. 



Most people take about four acres to pasture a cow. The soiling 

 crops are the only ones where I have to do any guessing. To get 

 at the silage is easy. Eight months' feeding, thirty-five pounds a 

 day an animal, makes, approximately, one hundred tons for twenty- 

 five head. On the basis of the price of hay that year I put silage 

 at $3 a ton. This year it would have been |1 a ton higher. Many 

 figure silage at the cost of production. It cost me much less than 

 $3 a ton to produce and put it in the silo. If I had the land that 

 grew the corn in ear corn or potatoes, with a like amount of labor 

 I should have received at least |45 an acre. I know what hay the 

 cows ate, and value it at what it would have sold for. The cost of 

 gathering would be the same in either case. Or, in other words, 

 these products which were fed to the cows, had thej been sold — or 

 their equivalent from the land — as they otherwise would have been, 

 would have brought me in cash what I have charged them at. I 

 have put the value of the cows at |50 each. I do not question that 

 they would bring that under the hammer. 



